Mental Health America - Mind Over Pop Culturehttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/tags/mind-over-pop-culture
enMind Over Pop Culture: Lars and the Real Girlhttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-lars-and-real-girl
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<p><em>Lars and The Real Girl</em> is a sweet movie that shows the power of true community integration. It’s the story of a young man who needs help and finds it with his family, friends, co-workers and church. It’s the kind of story that needs to be told more often in the face of the cynical stories told today.</p>
<p><em>Lars and the Real Girl</em> was made in 2007 and stars a pre-stardom Ryan Gosling as Lars. He’s a withdrawn, awkward but sweet young man who lives in the separated garage of his brother and pregnant sister-in-law, who try to get him to be more social. One day, he brings home a “Real Doll,” a life-sized sex doll, whom he introduces as Bianca. It is clear that Lars believes Bianca is a real person. They go along with the delusion, and his therapist encourages them to continue to do so. His brother and sister-in-law encourage the rest of the community to go along as well, and out of love for Lars, they do so. Bianca soon becomes a member of the community, with friends, a job and activities without him. Lars continues to see his therapist, and over the course of the movie, becomes less dependent on her. Eventually, she dies, and Lars takes tentative new steps towards a new relationship.</p>
<p>This movie really says something about what community support should look like, and how it can help. Lars’ therapist, played by Patricia Clarkson, tells his brother and sister-in-law “this isn't necessarily a bad thing. What we call mental illness isn't always just an illness. It can be a communication; it can be a way to work something out.” While a little simplistic, it’s a nice change from the constant refrain that people with mental illnesses are always going to be wrong or broken in some way. Lars’ brother is concerned that the townspeople are going to laugh at Lars and his wife points that he’s afraid they’re going to laugh at him. I’ve never seen a movie where often helpful but paternalistic attitudes towards family members with mental health conditions are laid out so obviously. Instead, his brother agrees to help with Bianca’s integration into their community and is seen explaining the difference between a delusion (a wrongly held belief) and a hallucination (a fault in perception). The couple also explains the situation to Lars’ church group, who support him as well. One member feels that its idolatry, and another member points out that four of them have family members who have mental health conditions. That’s another truth not often heard in mainstream movies.</p>
<p>Lars is the main character of the movie, and it’s his story. We learn that his mother died in childbirth, and he’s afraid of having children because of it. That fear amplified into a fear of intimacy and even touch. He explains to his therapist that being touched hurts him physically, like minor frostbite. His older brother left home as soon as possible, leaving Lars with their bereaved father, which makes him feel guilty. All of these facts help explain Lars, but they don’t fix him. He needs to deal with all of it himself, which he does over the course of the movie. His therapist does some aversion therapy for his touch issues (which don’t seem to work at first, but eventually do) and discussing his life and fears help him begin to overcome them. Sometimes the discussions are simple, like the discussion he has with his brother about being an adult, but sometimes, they aren’t simple. He gets into a fight with his sister-in-law when he thinks no one cares about him. “Every person in this town bends over backward to make Bianca feel at home. Why do you think she has so many places to go and so much to do? Huh? Huh? Because of you! Because - all these people - love you!” she yells at the angry Lars. In the end, it takes everyone’s influence, support and honesty to help Lars move into recovery. At the end of the movie, he’s not cured; he’s just dealing with his intimacy issues, which is a realistic place to be.</p>
<p><em>Lars and The Real Girl</em> is a wonderful little movie that shows the power of community support. It shows what can be done to help someone with a mental health condition simply by supporting them. With some compassion, a bit of understanding and lots of honesty, it’s truly possible to help someone cope with their mental health condition and move into recovery. This kind of story isn’t seen very often, and the power of having a support system around you is often lost in movies about mental health conditions. It’s a shame that it is because <em>Lars and the Real Girl</em> shows how powerful that story can be.</p>
<p>I highly recommend it. Next week, we’ll take a look at <em>Shine</em>, and the other side of family intervention. Have you seen <em>Lars and the Real Girl</em>? What did you think?</p>
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Fri, 10 Jan 2014 14:49:09 +0000trhodes653 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-lars-and-real-girl#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Hamlethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-hamlet
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<p>William Shakespeare wrote <u>Hamlet</u> around 1600, telling the story of a prince dealing with the death of his father and the quick remarriage of his mother to his uncle. The play uses mental health, both real and faked, as a way to show human behavior. Commonly studied in high schools all over America, this tale has had a profound effect on the way mental health is viewed.</p>
<p><u>The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark</u> tells the story of Hamlet, the young prince. When the play opens, his father has just died, and his mother has just married his father’s younger brother Claudius. A few soldiers on guard report to him that his father’s ghost has been seen, and he sees the ghost when he goes with them the next night. The ghost tells him that his uncle killed him to get his crown and his wife, and makes Hamlet swear to avenge his death. Hamlet decides to pretend to be insane to make sure the king doesn’t suspect him. Ophelia, the daughter of king’s advisor, Polonius, also rejects him, adding to his melancholy. He and his friend Horatio create a trap to observe Claudius’ reaction to a play depicting his murder, after which Hamlet is convinced that the ghost is telling the truth. A meeting with his mother in her room, in which Polonius is eavesdropping, ends with Hamlet killing Polonius, for which he is sent to Britain. Ophelia is distraught at his death and ends up raving mad. Her brother Laertes hears rumors of his father’s death while at school in France, and teams up with Claudius to kill Hamlet. Ophelia dies by drowning in a lake, and Laertes is killed during his fight with Hamlet. Claudius’ plan also kills Gertrude and Hamlet, but not before Hamlet kills him, finally avenging his father’s murder.</p>
<p>As it turns out, summarizing <u>Hamlet</u> is a harder task than I realized, but you get the picture of how mental health is used in the play. It is seen both fake and real. Hamlet uses “madness” as a disguise, allowing him to get the information he needs about Claudius’ actions. He also uses it as an excuse for his actions, mainly Polonius’ murder. Claudius also uses it as an excuse to have him exiled instead of executed since Hamlet is very popular with the Danish people. In addition, though, you can see his genuine grief over the death of his father, and at one point says, “I know of late- but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth.” His depression over his father’s illness is very real but often rolled up in his faked madness. On the other hand, Ophelia is genuinely “mad,” sick with grief over her father’s death and unable to fit in with the court society. Her scene with her brother, who just confirmed his father’s death, is heartbreaking. She doesn’t recognize him at all. Her death is still debated by scholars whether it was an accident or suicide. These two opposing views of madness exist side by side.</p>
<p>This play, with its uncountable stage adaptions and over 500 movies, has had a major impact on how people view mental health conditions, even if they aren’t aware of it. It is taught in high schools all over America (and the world), and most of the population of the country is at least aware of it by name. It is one of the most common views of mental health in this country. But is it a good view? That depends on how it’s taught. Hamlet’s madness is both real and faked, and the real part often gets overlooked. Unconsciously, by focusing on his faked illness, mental health conditions are minimized or connected to someone faking it to get what they want. Combined with the repeated images the media reports about people with mental health conditions, the idea that all “madness” is faked gets reinforced.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the play is genuinely seen as one of the most humanistic stories ever written. All of the characters are recognizable people, even after 400 years, with motivations you can understand and reactions that make sense. Ophelia’s illness is very real and dealt with sympathetically. Her illness is treated with sympathy, and her death is treated with respect. The treatment of her mental health condition is truly powerful, coming from a time when people with mental health conditions were often abused or neglected. The grief after her death is another instance of Shakespeare’s understanding of how people actually behave.</p>
<p><u>Hamlet</u>’s depiction of mental health conditions is a mixed blessing. It has brought the discussion of mental health conditions to many Americans who might not ever think about them, and it has the potential to help reduce the stigma around these conditions by showing them honestly and respectfully. It also has the potential to be taught without that respect, and with a focus on Hamlet’s acting and not his grief. Ultimately, the play has opened the discussion about mental health conditions for teenagers for a long time and will do so in the future.</p>
<p>If you’d like to see an excellent version of the play, I recommend Kenneth Branagh’s complete text version of it. For something just as good and little shorter, try Michael Almereyda's version, starring Ethan Hawke. For a classic view, you can’t go wrong with Laurence Olivier’s version, which he directed and starred in.</p>
<p>Next week, we’ll take a look at <em>Lars and the Real Girl</em>, an indie movie that embraces community support in its purest form. Have you read <u>Hamlet</u> since high school? What do you think of the handling of mental health conditions in the play?</p>
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Thu, 02 Jan 2014 21:29:26 +0000trhodes649 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-hamlet#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Primal Fearhttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-primal-fear
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<p class="MsoNormal">Crime is usually connected to mental health in fiction. What that really means and what that looks like in fiction may vary a bit, with some stories showing empathy for the person and others favoring lock them up and throw away the key scenarios. Often the interactions are cheap and over simplified and cater to the lowest common denominator. A perfect example of this is <em>Primal Fear</em>.<br /><br /><em>Primal Fear</em> is the 1996 movie that launched Edward Norton’s career. The story focuses on Richard Gere’s portrayal of Martin Vail, a hotshot lawyer in love with publicity. When the Archbishop of Boston is brutally murdered, he agrees to pro bono defend Aaron Stampler, the young, stammering suspect. Aaron is at first confused by how he wound up covered in blood and fleeing the scene, but after questioning, a violent split personality named Roy appears and confesses to the murder. Martin, knowing he can’t introduce an insanity defense midway through the trial, he uses his previous relationship with the Prosecutor to get what he needs into evidence. He then gets Roy to manifest during the trial. The Judge dismisses the jury and finds Aaron guilty by reason of insanity. There is a twist ending, though. When Martin goes to his cell to tell Aaron, Roy tells him that Aaron never existed.<br /><br />
This is the big fear people have, isn’t it? That someone who “gets off by reason of insanity” is just playing a game. That they’ll pretend to be sick, and get away with it, and then spend two years in a mental hospital and be free to kill again. This feeling is why people say “get off by reason of insanity.” It allows people with mental health conditions to be the boogeyman who comes back to hurt other people. It also reinforces the idea that psychiatrists have no idea what they’re doing, just pointing at people and labeling them as sick. The idea that someone can have no control over what they’re doing, or doing something honestly with the completely wrong concept of what’s going on is so foreign to a person who’s never experienced it before that they can’t understand it. So much stigma exists because people ignore what they can’t understand, and this is the perfect example of it. The insanity defense is so misunderstood that movies like this can help solidify its image in people’s minds. <br /><br />
The problem with this understanding of the insanity defense, and of mental health and the criminal justice system in general, is that it’s completely wrong. In the United States, less than 1% of defendants used the insanity defense, and of them, only 1 in 4 was successful (statistic from Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry, Vol. 19, No. 4, 1991). Of people sent to mental hospitals instead of prisons, they are likely to spend much more time there than they would in jail; in fact, some spend double the time. They are also likely to be under long-term court review, unlike people released from prison (from The Jurisprudence of the Insanity Defense, citing Rodriguez, LeWinn, and Perlin, The Insanity Defense Under Siege: Legislative Assaults and Legal Rejoinders, 14 Rutgers Law Journal 397, 402 (1983)). In addition, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2006 that approximately half of inmates in prisons had mental health conditions (Found at <a href="http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Press_September_2006&amp;Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=38175">http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Press_September_2006&amp;Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDis...</a>.), an estimated, and troubling, 1.25 million people. Often people with mental health conditions are imprisoned for minor infractions, and have severe trouble adjusting to prison life, leading to longer incarcerations (from <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled">http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled</a>).<br /><br />
This crisscross of people with mental health conditions and the justice system is complicated, rooted in history and not easy to solve. The average person, however, doesn’t see that unless they go looking for it. So stories like Primal Fear, which is a good movie, perpetrate the idea that people with mental health conditions are faking it (or that they can be easily cured by love, respect or material goods) because the actual answer is too complicated.<br /><br />
By saying that someone is “crazy,” the creator can sidestep the harder questions of whether anyone can be violent, and mental illness becomes a shortcut. Answering why anyone would kill innocent children can be answered easily with “they’re crazy,” as if no other answer was necessary. Everyone involved can shrug and move on with life, safe in the knowledge that they would never do anything like that. It’s a simplified answer to a complicated question.<br /><br /><em>Primal Fear</em> is a good movie, in so far as I enjoyed watching it again. The acting is top-notch, the story is tight, and the mystery is exciting. It’s one of the better cheap thrillers of the 1990s. Like a lot of the movies I’ve watched for this blog, the problems appear when you start to compare them to the real world, and look at how they are commenting on life. It’s not one instance of mental health on film; it’s the accumulation of all of the views and they portray. It gets overwhelming.<br /><br />
Next week, the mother of all crazy movies, <em>Psycho</em>. Have you seen Primal Fear? What do you think?</p>
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Thu, 17 Oct 2013 19:52:05 +0000Anonymous378 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-primal-fear#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Fatal Attractionhttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-fatal-attraction
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<p class="MsoNormal">It’s October, so I thought I’d use this month’s blog posts to go back to where we started, with horror. (I’m not reviewing this season’s <em>American Horror Story</em>.) The perfect place to start is with <em>Fatal Attraction</em>, with one of the most obvious villains with mental health conditions in film history.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fatal Attraction is a 1987 movie starring Michael Douglas as Dan, a seemingly happy family man, Anne Archer as his wife Beth and Glenn Close as Alex, a woman he has an affair with. Dan and Alex have an affair, which Dan believes is a one-time thing, but Alex believes is more. She tries to get him to go to the opera with her, but when he won’t, she gets angry and abusive. She begins stalking him, eventually attempting suicide, kidnapping his daughter and infamously boiling a bunny. In the end, Beth takes violent action to deal with the situation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This movie is in a weird place in history. It received six Oscar nominations, including best picture, and is generally considered a classic movie. It’s also quite often used in classrooms to illustrate borderline personality disorder, which is what Alex is generally considered having. It’s also one of the highest profiled movies with a person with a mental health condition, and one who is successful and glamorous.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But! Alex is also the villain in the movie, because of her mental health condition. Everything she does seems to stem from it. Her actions are used to illustrate borderline personality disorder because they follow the textbook symptoms so completely. Her story arc mirrors the slasher movie villains of the time, right down to the ‘he’s not dead’ jump at the end. It’s ludicrous and kind of offensive to people with mental health conditions. At no time in the movie does anyone think to get her help, even when she attempts suicide, or even to call the police about her behavior. The movie never mentions mental health, except to call her “a crazy bitch” repeatedly.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The other significant issue is that Dan is supposed to be the hero of the movie. He cheats on his wife, treats both her and his lover terribly, and the audience is supposed to be supportive of him. Knowing how sick Alex is, watching him use, ignore her, abuse her and then try to kill her is hard to watch. If he told anyone about her behavior at any time during the movie, I would have more sympathy for him (and that adorable bunny would be ok!). In hopes of saving his marriage, he doesn't get her help, and because of that, the only inevitable conclusion is her death. That makes Alex another person with a mental health condition who is shown to be so out of control that death is the only option for them. That sounds pretty stigmatizing, don’t you think?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Because of its Oscar nominations,<em> Fatal Attraction</em> is one of the best known illustrations of a person with a mental health condition in pop culture. The problem is that it’s one of the most stigmatizing. By making the villain of the movie a person with a mental health condition (whose behavior is caused by that illness), we’ve enshrined mental illness as a villainous thing, a trait that belongs to people who need to be killed by good people. That sounds like a horror movie to me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(It should be noted that Glenn Close has been an outspoken advocate for people with mental conditions in the last few years. Her work with Bring Change 2 Mind has been admirable. She still supports <em>Fatal Attraction</em> though.)</p>
<p>Next week, we’ll take a look at <em>Primal Fear</em>, the courtroom thriller with Richard Gere and Ed Norton. Have you seen <em>Fatal Attraction</em>? What do you think of the movie’s portrayal of people with mental health conditions?</p>
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Thu, 10 Oct 2013 17:30:57 +0000Anonymous379 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-fatal-attraction#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Nellhttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-nell
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<p class="MsoNormal">The ‘90s don’t seem like that long ago, certainly not 20 years. But having watched a bunch of ‘90s movies for this blog, I’ve come away with the thought that things really have changed. <em>Nell</em> brought that point home very clearly.<br /><br />
The movie <em>Nell</em> was made in 1994 and stars Jodie Foster as the title character. A young woman raised in isolation by her grandmother, she is “found” after the older woman’s death, and it is discovered that she speaks a made-up language. The local town doctor, played by Liam Neeson, and a psychiatrist, played by the late Natasha Richardson, work with Nell in hopes of helping her. They fight the courts, the media and each other about the best way to handle Nell’s situation. Eventually, they are able to help her have a fulfilling life.<br /><br />
Here’s the thing though. Before she’s “found,” Nell is having a fulfilling life. She doesn’t speak English (her made-up language is eventually discovered to be a mix of the made up language she and her deceased twin sister spoke and a very strong accent), but she’s capable of taking care of herself. The doctors originally believe her to be autistic, but over time, they realize that no, she’s just used to being alone. When they first meet her, Neeson’s character physically holds her down so Richardson’s character can take her blood, despite her clearly telling them no. She’s perfectly capable of making the doctors aware of her wishes; it just takes them a bit of time to understand her. By the end of the movie, she testifies for herself in court (with Neeson’s translation) about how she wants to go home, to the place they found her at the beginning of the movie.<br /><br />
I was amazed at how tone deaf this movie actually was. I remember seeing it in high school and thinking it was profound, but it’s really not. Nell is forcibly taken from her home and tested on because she’s an oddity. The movie makes it seem like this is a great thing. They even make it seem like the two doctors are doing her a favor by removing her from her home and forcing her to learn English (even when she’s catatonic in bed out of fear). It’s terrible, and it made me feel a little dirty. Movies like this inform people its okay to force other human beings to conform to society, no matter what damage it does to them. It’s really creepy how self-congratulatory this movie is about some serious violations of civil rights.<br /><br /><em>Nell</em> is a dramatic view of the “feral child,” a few cases from history of children raised without regular human interaction or with horrible abuse that caused them to fear human interaction. (For some genuinely interesting stories about these children, read the examples on Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child</a>). Instead of doing justice to this interesting and tragic phenomenon, this movie just perpetuates the stereotype that people who don’t act like you (or speak English) don’t deserve the same respect that you do. A movie about acquiring language at a later time in life would be fascinating, but this isn’t it. I don’t know if it’s because Jodie Foster is obviously in her 30s, but she wouldn’t have been able to survive to that age if she couldn’t take care of herself in some way. Foster really commits to the role, but in an uncomfortable, might be mocking the character, sort of way.<br /><br />
If you haven’t seen <em>Nell</em>, don’t. It’s likely to make you feel as uncomfortable as it made me feel. If you have seen it, what did you think? Did you watch it recently?<br /><br />
Next week, we’ll start the Halloween movies with one of the significant ones, <em>Fatal Attraction</em>.</p>
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Thu, 03 Oct 2013 19:54:52 +0000Anonymous380 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-nell#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Adventure Time "I Remember You"http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-adventure-time-i-remember-you
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<p class="MsoNormal">One of the great things about this blog is finding unknown or hidden places where mental health conditions are being addressed and looking at what is being said about them. One of the great, positive frontiers is children’s television. Newer shows seem much more willing to take a look at these controversial issues head on. One recent example is <em>Adventure Time</em>’s season four episode “I Remember You.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em>Adventure Time</em> is a Cartoon Network show about a boy named Finn and his shape-shifting, talking dog named Jake. They live in an absurdist world, fighting villains who aren’t really evil and saving princesses who don’t need saving. Among the villains is a man named the Ice King, who controls ice and snow, and wants to date a princess (and is friends with penguins). One of the princesses is a 1000 year old vampire named Marceline, who wants to play her bass guitar, not be evil (she drinks the color red, not blood). Some of the other characters include the Bubblegum Princess, who is made of bubblegum and is a scientist, and BMO, a living videogame console. (Television shows for kids seem to be getting more complicated, don’t they?)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the episode “I Remember You,” the Ice King wants to get himself a girlfriend and hears that women love men with tragic pasts (in a brilliant takedown of pick-up artists). Believing that he has a tragic past that he can’t remember, he takes pages of his scrapbook (which he comments “still smells like tears”) to Marceline, and asks her to help him write a song. While he sings about the Bubblegum Princess, the song eventually breaks down to him wailing about wanting someone to love him. Marceline reads the pages of the diary, and the audience learns that he helped raise little Marceline. Eventually, we learn that the Ice crown he wears is destroying his brain but keeping him alive. In the end, she realizes that he’ll never remember her.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is one of the most direct views of mental health conditions (and memory loss conditions) I’ve seen. The Ice King has no control over his reactions, and the loss of his relationship with Marceline is tragic (even for someone who doesn’t watch the show). He’s oblivious to her pain, but not because he’s mean-spirited but because he has no way to handle it. At one point, she yells at him to “stop being crazy,” and his response is to climb on top of her fridge. It’s weird and funny and sad all at the same time. He pleads at another point, “Why won’t anyone tell me what’s wrong with me?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Marceline, meanwhile, is stuck remembering their relationship before the crown destroyed his brain. She loved him, and still does, but can’t handle him for long stretches of time. Adding to her stress is the knowledge (written on a picture of her as child), that he wore the crown to live forever because he didn’t want her to be alone. She’s guilty for it, and for not helping take care of him, and that knowledge doesn’t help.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For a 15 minute short, this was incredibly moving. The relationship between the Ice King and Marceline is fractured but loving, and her exasperation and her sorrow is pitch perfect. From what I know of the show, they have dealt with this relationship in other episodes and plan to do so in the future. This is a great way to help children understand what it’s like to have a mental health condition and how empathy can help someone. It’s also pretty funny, as long as you just go with the all of the weirdness. I’m really glad to see this topic being dealt with so completely, and so well, for such a young audience. I have to think that episodes like this will help the next generation remove the stigma around mental health conditions.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Next week, we’ll take a look at the 1994 movie <em>Nell</em>, which featured an Oscar nominated Jody Foster as a young woman living alone in a cabin, and the doctors who study her. Have you seen this episode of <em>Adventure Time</em>? What do you think of its handling of mental health conditions?</p>
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<a href="/tags/mind-over-pop-culture" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mind Over Pop Culture</a> </div>
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<a href="/tags/television" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Television</a> </div>
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Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:27:05 +0000Anonymous381 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-adventure-time-i-remember-you#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Tender is the Nighthttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-tender-night
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tender is the Night</span> is one of those books that has been on my to read list for as long as I can remember. Considered one of the classics of American literature, its reputation precedes it, to the point of obscuring what the novel is actually about. A scathing review of the idle rich and mental health in the 1920s and 1930s, the novel illuminates one ugly, persuasive view of psychiatry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tender is Night</span> is about Dick and Nicole Driver, two rich expat Americans in Europe after World War I. Dick is a highly renowned psychiatrist , and Nicole is a Chicago heiress, and the two have a glamorous lifestyle and intelligent, wealthy friends. Introduced to Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress traveling with her mother, the Divers take her under their wing, and she and Dick fall in love. Over the course of the novel, we learn that Nicole was a patient of Dick’s, and their lifestyle begins to fall apart. He develops alcoholism and Nicole falls in love with someone else. Eventually, they separate, with Nicole now the strong one and Dick the weak one.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This novel has a very bleak outlook on psychiatry, much more than I was prepared for. Dick is a terrible psychiatrist, renowned only for writing textbooks. He has very little interaction with patients until Nicole, whom he meets while she is living at a clinic in Switzerland. He goes to talk to Dr. Franz Dangeu, a man who eventually becomes his partner in another clinic, and meets her. She falls in love and writes him a series of letters, some of which are barely coherent. By the time he comes back to the clinic, Dr. Dangeu’s suggestion is that her transference to him is great and that they should get married. It’s completely irresponsible, and every mental health decision in the novel is (to say nothing of the prejudice and bigotry of the 1920s, fully on display). Dick sees his few patients as allegories and characters, not actual people. Even Nicole is not a real person, just an idea to protect. He never does any actual therapy with her (though we see it with Dr. Dangeu), and never actually helps her. The fact that he’s her therapist comes as a surprise to everyone in the story, and rightly so. I’m not sure what it means that Dick is reported based on Fitzgerald himself.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nicole’s story, though, is fascinating. As an heiress, her father has the money to send her away to get well, and he does his best to do so. She is originally seen as hysterical, and that is seen through disordered thinking, irrational anger and loss of control of her emotions. Within sessions with Dr. Dangeu, we learn that her father raped her as a child (“just once” he explains in his own session), and her repression of the incident caused her symptoms. Once she dealt with the issue, and her father agreed not to see her for five years, she gets much better. She still has a hard time dealing with stressful issues, a problem that gets worse through the novel, but at the end, she is in recovery and able to take control of her own life. She’s relatively open about having been a mental patient, retorting to Dick’s insistence that another patient is lying about him, “I used to be a mental patient.” Another character tells him “You don’t understand Nicole. You always treat her like a patient because she was once sick.” For the 1920s, the attitude to her is quite progressive, even if the attitude to psychiatry isn’t. She’s a really interesting character, a complete person whose illness is only a small part of her. Nicole, is based on Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, and I think his love for his wife comes through in her character whether he means it to or not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tender is the Night</span> is a beautifully written book about terrible people. Dick is a horrible person who only gets worse, and he’s the main character. Nicole and Rosemary aren’t much better, with Nicole throwing money around and Rosemary swooning over Dick. If anything, their love for Dick makes them harder to like. But the writing is so beautiful, and the way the narrative flows between the characters is gorgeous. Lines like “Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself” and “Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the moment there was nothing to do but to pretend” are everywhere. My personal favorite is “you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people's lives.” The language alone makes me want to re-read it, but the idle richness and casual cruelty on display put a lot of distance between the reader and the characters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Classic books are classic for a reason, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tender is the Night</span> certainly lives up to its reputation. It encapsulates one very biased viewpoint of psychiatry at one point in time, a very clear view of a very angry point of view. The novel is an interesting look at psychiatry from the upper class, white point of view in a time dominated by psychoanalysis, and for that, it’s worth reading. For the language alone, it’s worth reading. Just don’t plan to like any of the characters.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Next week, we’re going to switch gears completely and look at an episode of the current children’s show <em>Adventure Time</em>. Have you read <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Tender is the Night</span>? What did you think of the psychology and mental health conditions on display?</p>
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<a href="/tags/movies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Movies</a> </div>
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Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:22:49 +0000Anonymous382 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-tender-night#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: A Dangerous Methodhttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-dangerous-method
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<p class="MsoNormal">The movie <em>A Dangerous Method</em> focuses on one specific aspect of psychology, the early years of psychoanalysis. The interaction between the well-known psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung was seminal in the creation of the new discipline. What the movie looks at is the importance of two other, less famous colleagues, Sabrina Spielrein and Otto Gross, who were influential at the beginning of the movement.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The movie focuses on Sabina Spielrein, a young woman admitted to Burghölzli, the famous mental hospital in Zurich, and played by Keira Knightley. Diagnosed with hysteria, she’s treated by Carl Jung, then a physician just learning Freud’s psychoanalysis and played by Michael Fassbender. Spielrein begins to help Jung with his scientific studies into the discipline as well as earning her medical degree. Freud, played by Viggo Mortensen, would send Austrian Otto Gross to Jung for therapy, a meeting that would change Jung’s mind about repression. After months of therapy (and with an acknowledge crush on him), she and Jung begin an affair, and she began a correspondence with Freud. Eventually, she would become a psychoanalyst in her right with the publication of her dissertation on destruction in the psyche, which would influence both men. Jung and Freud would eventually have a falling out, and she and Jung would break up. She became one of the Russia’s first and most influential psychoanalysts, focusing on children. She would be killed by the Nazis in 1941.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Spielrein is one of psychoanalysis’ lost creators. The main focus of the discipline was created by Freud at the turn of the century, but by 1910, most of the doctors working with theory were concerned about its focus entirely on sex. The drives for destruction and pleasures other than sex were introduced early on, as were the ideas of repression, and the id, ego and superego. Spielrein’s work with Jung convinced both of them that the drive for creation contained an element of destruction not addressed in Freud’s work (yet; he would add it to “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” in 1920, a full 8 years after she’d published her work), nor Jung’s (yet; he would name it transformation). Her work with the two men and her influence on the beginnings of psychoanalysis hasn’t been fully acknowledged. In addition, she was one of the first doctors to use psychoanalysis on children, to acknowledge that what they were going through affected their mental health and behavior. She also treated Jean Paiget, one of child psychology’s major figures.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Otto Gross, on the other hand, had less of a direct influence on the field, mainly due to his extreme views, but greater in the art world. Gross was an early adopter of psychoanalysis, but felt that any repression was bad for a person. As a result, he encouraged free love and drug use, things the straight-laced Freud and Jung didn’t support. He was also a consumer, dealing with a substance use condition for much of his life. His theories directly influenced Jung during the brief period when Gross was his patient. He helped Jung crystalize his personality theory of extroversion and, according to the movie, encouraged him to have an affair with Spielrein, which would push Jung further from Freud. He also helped show Jung the limits of psychoanalysis, when Gross was able to take control of a session between the two men. His influence would later be felt in Dadaist art and bohemian culture (up to the counterculture of the ‘60s).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Early psychoanalysis is focused on Freud and Jung and is often seen as a battle between the two titans, when, in reality, the field evolved as doctors tested Freud’s work and added their own theories. Many people are ignored, marginalized or written out of history entirely. The movie even briefly features Eugen Bleuler, the head of Burghölzli, and the man who named schizophrenia, but does not touch on his contributions to the field.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think this movie sheds light on a lot of important things going on at the beginning of psychoanalysis, but it doesn’t do it completely, or particularly entertainingly. Keira Knightley overacts for much of the movie, and Vincent Cassel’s Otto Gross seems like he belongs in a different movie. David Cronenberg, the director (also of previous blog topic <em>Spider</em>), wanted to make talking about sex as exciting as the visual representations usually found in his movies. He fails, leaving the movie feeling a bit stilted. Instead of feeling like the characters belong in the turn of the century Europe, they feel like they are in a play about the time. It distracts from the story, which I think would make a great miniseries.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em>A Dangerous Method</em> is an OK movie about an interesting topic. If you are interested in the beginning of psychoanalysis, this isn’t a bad place to start. If you like Cronenberg movies or period pieces, stay away.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Next week, we’ll take a look at <em>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</em>, a modern movie about mental health in teens. Have you seen A Dangerous Method? What did you think?</p>
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Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:22:12 +0000Anonymous385 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-dangerous-method#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Prozac Nationhttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-prozac-nation
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<![endif]-->Prozac Nation is a movie that’s been on my Netflix Queue for a long time. It’s been one of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>those movies that keeps getting pushed down when something more interesting comes up, with the reasoning that I’ll get to it eventually. I wish I hadn’t gotten to it. It’s one of the more infuriating movies I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s not a good thing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Prozac Nation is based on Elizabeth Wertzel’s book of the same name, about her mental health breakdown during her first year at Harvard. An award-winning columnist and journalist by the time she got to Harvard, she was expected to be a major star in the music journalism field. Instead, she was overwhelmed by the symptoms of her bipolar disorder, leading to alienating friends, suicide attempts and eventual hospitalization. She repeatedly made terrible decisions about her life before reaching rock bottom. She eventually became healthier and wrote Prozac Nation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The movie stars Christine Ricci as Wertzel with great gusto, but boy is her character a terrible person. Because it’s in the first person narrative, it can be difficult to tell where her symptoms end and her just being a jerk comes into play, but Elizabeth is really a terrible person. She’s entitled, mean, rude and just generally insufferable. She tells her roommate, played by Michelle Williams, that only she understands true love, despite breaking up Williams’ relationship with her fiancé. When Williams’ tries to argue, Wertzel shuts her down by saying “you only understand sex, and you only ever will.” At another point, she surprises her boyfriend by showing up at his house in Arizona despite his telling directly not to come, and is angry when he’s not happy to see her. She learns that he’s helping take care of his disabled sister, and she accuses him of getting off sexually on it. It’s a hard scene to take since he’s been nothing but supportive of her, despite her being terrible to him.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The biggest problem with the movie is that it presents all of this behavior as part of her illness, and assumes that the audience will eventually be sympathetic to her. Instead of helping separate what behaviors are caused by the illness (her repeated scribblings that she insists are a column and her hard drug use), all of her heinous behavior is waved off like she had no control over any of it. She refuses treatment for much of the movie, and then complains that she has no control. She has fractured relationships with both parents, but at no time is the fact that having a bad relationship with her parents didn’t give her bipolar disorder. In fact, the movie basically says that it did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The movie is hard to watch because Wertzel is such a hard character. Every person in the movie either enables her or leaves. The movie is presented as the lessons she learned as after the fact, but there’s no indication she learned anything except don’t get caught. In addition, the movie is sure it's saying something deep, especially when it gets into the fact that her doctor is her dealer and “we live in a Prozac nation,” but it isn’t. It doesn’t have anything else to add to the discussion of mental health in America. It's another story of an upper class white person dealing with their issues with their parents. The only interesting issue that comes up is the problems paying for her treatment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m sorry if I sound a bit bitter about it, but I’ve seen a lot of movies like this. There are huge issues in the mental health field, and there aren’t a lot of movies addressing them. Instead, we get another horrible person complaining about taking pills, or teaching society what they learned about “being crazy.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Stay away from this one, trust me. Next week, we’ll finally take a look at A Dangerous Method, and see if the beginnings of psychoanalysis has more to say about mental health. Have you seen Prozac Nation? Was I being too hard on it?</p>
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Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:37:10 +0000Anonymous386 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-prozac-nation#commentsMind Over Pop Culture: Romeo and Juliethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-romeo-and-juliet
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<p>Does familiarity with a story dim its effects on a person?If over 400 years have passed since its creation, can a play still encourage a person to self-harm?With William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it seems that question is still very open. The numerous movies made of the story help keep it in the public consciousness, like Baz Lurhmann’s 1996 adaptation, Romeo+Juliet.</p>
<p>The play centers on Romeo and Juliet, two young lovers from warring families who fall in love at a party. After marrying in secret, Romeo is involved in a fight with Juliet’s cousin and kills him. He is banished from the kingdom. In order to be together, the friar who marries them gives her a potion that mimics death. Romeo never gets the message that she’s not dead, and comes back into the city. He eventually kills himself at her side. When she wakes up, she sees him dead and also kills herself. The play ends with the Prince telling the families of their responsibility in their children’s deaths.</p>
<p>The way the play is often taught does have a tendency to glamorize suicide. Romeo and Juliet are seen as the ultimate lovers, who could never be without one another. Their love is idealized, and their suicide is seen as the final desperate act of love. In fact, the story’s focus on them encourages such a reading, and such an adaptation. In Lurhmann’s movie, for example, they are certainly shown that way.</p>
<p>The thing is, though, the play isn’t written that way. It’s clear throughout that the lovers are depressed and looking for a way out. Both families use their children to set up alliances without seeing what they want, leading to a very palpable lack of control that the teens face. They marry in secret, with the friar openly telling them that he wants their marriage to bring the families together, which is a huge burden on them. The behavior of both teens change dramatically in a very short period of time, and their hopelessness and grief is palpable. The fact that the play is a tragedy is also telling. Shakespeare showed how sad the loss of these two young lives was, not idealizing their end. It’s even implied that their deaths changed nothing in the war between the two families.</p>
<p>The problem is the way the story is presented to the audience. Often, the two young leads are shown as being deeply in love, and their suicide is a romantic act. That kind of presentation is dangerous, and can lead to a more positive view of suicide. We need to change the way the play is taught, filmed and staged to lead away from that reading to something more realistic, and in line with what the play actually says. That way, suicide is seen the way it really is, a fatal symptom of an illness.</p>
<p>If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please reach out to the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK. If you’d like to read about someone who’s using Romeo and Juliet to help educate about suicide and teach resiliency and prevention, visit <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-05/features/8802220016_1_romeo-and-juliet-youth-suicide-prevention-sara-deats" target="_blank">http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-05/features/8802220016_1_romeo-and-juliet-youth-suicide-prevention-sara-deats</a>.</p>
<p>Next week, we’ll look at The Caveman’s Valentine. What do you think about Romeo and Juliet and its relationship to suicide? What were you taught about it?</p>
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Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:43:27 +0000Anonymous391 at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.nethttp://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/blog/mind-over-pop-culture-romeo-and-juliet#comments